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Cover to Cover

The cover of New York's 40th-anniversary issue reconfigures the magazine's debut image, a Jay Maisel photograph of the city skyline, by treating it with metallic silver. Similarly, covers in recent years have returned to the principles established in the sixties and seventies: Playful, conceptual treatments of iconic subjects. There is a connection in approach between the image of John Lindsay from the neck down that illustrated Jimmy Breslin's "Is Lindsay Too Tall to Be Mayor?" in July 1968, the photograph of Park Avenue maidens with fists raised in Black Panther salute for Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic" in June 1970, and contemporary covers like Barbara Kruger's Eliot Spitzer "Brain" cover and the montage of Barack Obama and John McCain bumping fists for this year's summer issue. Click through the slideshow for a selection of 40 favorite covers from the magazine's last 40 years.